The Secret Thread: Literature & Spiritual Life: EXCLUSIVE, Coming Soon

Thursday, October 27, 2005

EXCLUSIVE, Coming Soon

Secret Thread readers, who ever may have seen my previous post on the novelist Stephen Wright (see 'A Great Writer is Set to Return....' in the archives), it's a great pleasure to be able to say that by virtue of some great advice from my friend and fellow writer RICHARD HOROWITZ, I managed to procure an ADVANCED COPY of Stephen Wright's new novel, 'The Amalgamation Polka'. I have read the novel, which represents a new direction in some ways for Wright, and is a book that I hope and believe will finally bring Wright the readers and the accolades that he so richly deserves.

In a short time, I will be posting here a review of the new novel, which I hope will generate interest in whoever might see it to pick up their own copy of the book, which is due in February 2006. Wright is clearly among the finest novelists working today, and this novel is a startling, at times searing, and ultimately redepmptive new chapter in a literary career that is quickly taking on the unmistakable aura of legend.

Be on the look out for Mutt Ploughman's Exclusive Advanced Review of Stephen Wright's 'The Amalgamation Polka'.

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Duke Altum's Recommended Films

Monsters (2010) – As many have already said, calling Monsters a movie about an alien occupation of Earth seems to do this fascinating, original film a disservice. Certainly the fact that huge, bioluminescent squid-like extraterrestrials are running amok through the jungles of Central America is an important (and entertaining) element of the plot, but anyone coming into this one looking for non-stop, Aliens-style action or special effects eye candy a la the concurrent alien invasion flick Skyline is going to be sorely disappointed. Instead, what you have with Monsters is an intriguing and meditative hybrid of road movie, post-apocalyptic thriller and surprisingly believable human drama. Director Gareth Edwards wrote, edited and created special effects for the film on his own, which gave him the freedom to make exactly the kind of movie he wanted to make - that is, a love story that just happens to feature alien life forms ominously howling and lurking in the background (this approach, by the way, gives the film its pervasive suspense and intensity, as you are as in the dark as the characters are about when the next encounter with a pissed-off, tentacled alien might occur). The many scenes of unscripted, natural banter between the lead actors as they trek across the "infected zone" and get to know one another help you, crucially, to identify with them enough to care by the final act - which provides an unexpected, subtle twist that gives the entire story added poignancy and irony. I am sure that a great many viewers of this unusual film will come out feeling somewhere between perplexed and downright cheated, and Edwards does provide so little backstory about the aliens and what they might be up to that one may well wonder why they were in the movie at all (and, justifiably, why the film was ever called "Monsters"). But I found that their mysterious, vaguely menacing presence gave the entire story a kind of haunted and other-wordly atmosphere that reminded me a bit of the best bits of James Cameron's The Abyss. I guess you could say that early encounters with new life forms - like those with potential lovers - can be both exhilarating and weirdly disconcerting at the same time.